


Threshold Host Density

by Guede



Series: Sustainable Management [9]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: All the Hales Are Trolls, Alternate Universe - No Hale Fire, Alternate Universe - Werewolves Are Known, Dom/sub Undertones, F/M, Failwolf, Human Alpha Stiles Stilinski, Incest, M/M, Magical Stiles Stilinski, Multi, Orgasm Delay/Denial, Outdoor Sex, Pack Bonding, Pack Dynamics, Polyamory, Rabies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-23
Updated: 2015-12-23
Packaged: 2018-05-08 13:58:10
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 17,276
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5499650
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Guede/pseuds/Guede
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Stiles and pack pull rabies clean-up duty and Laura is <i>still</i> around, for some reason.  Also, tent sex.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Threshold Host Density

**Author's Note:**

> If you haven't been reading the parent-centric installments, you do need to read [Competitive Altruism in Hunter-Werewolf Associations](http://archiveofourown.org/works/5328431), as this directly deals with the aftermath from that.

In theory, having a mature Nemeton and a werewolf pack at his disposal should make Stiles’ life a lot easier when it comes to certain tasks, such as tracking down and handling any wildlife that have come into contact with their recent rabid visitor. The Nemeton can track any animals within the preserve’s borders, while the werewolves can capture any suspiciously-behaving ones for further inspection and/or handling, with a minimum of damage to everyone. In theory. 

In practice, the Nemeton’s still pissy about being hauled out of its first good hibernation in several years. Plants aren’t supposed to be vengeful, but if the tree hauls Stiles out to it for pre-dawn alerts three days in a row, well, Stiles is…going to drag his ass out there, and check things out, and be grateful that his semester finals were all scheduled for the first week so he can spend his spare time napping. And maybe he also caves and takes the full camping set-up—including the custom-ordered, oversized sleeping bag rated for Arctic expeditions _and_ multiple partners—that Peter presents him with on the third day. It’s important not to spoil Nemetons, at least if you’re not looking to turn into a crazy people-sacrificing darach, but Stiles doesn’t look at this as spoiling so much as ensuring that he, as the tree’s guardian, does not have a sleep-deprived psychotic break. Which would pretty much end the same way.

Anyway. That’s pretty easy to take care of. The werewolves’ inability to bring in _anything_ alive, on the other hand…yeah. “I know we went over this,” Stiles sighs, staring at the bloody bits in the sample bag. “Like, a lot. Like, me _and_ my dad _and_ your mom, so…”

And of all people, it’s Laura Hale who’s staring back at him, chin slightly lifted and jutted, rest of her face set into an unreasonably attractive—Stiles is taken, not dead—scowl. He’s not sure whether that’s just genetics, or if she’s deliberately trying to play on whatever works for her brother, but either way, he’s having a hard time not just telling the tree it’s all her fault he keeps waking it.

“Yeah, I know, I read the briefing. And the footnotes. And the appendix, and all the optional references,” Laura says, holding up her hand as Stiles starts to remind her. Her brows quirk in a way that’s totally Peter, what with how it screams _of course I have this, you cute little one, you_. “Hello, grad student?”

“Hello, inability to complete the first step of conservation and actually keep things alive?” Stiles mutters. He sighs and takes the sample bag from her, and drops it in the rapidly-filling cooler of other souvenirs from gutted wildlife. Then he’s going to cross off that poor…bird thing, he’ll just let the lab rats try and ID this one…from the list, except that he’s left his computer in his tent. “Look, the wild boar we could deal with, but are you seriously going to try and make us believe that the bird gave you no choice but to eliminate it?”

He also left Derek back in there, but since Derek’s been somewhat more successful about only killing the shit that’s actually exhibiting rabies symptoms, Stiles was going to let him sleep in. But when Stiles pokes his head in, Derek already is holding out his laptop. Also, is snaking into the usual indecently snug jeans, grumbling and sporting sexy bedhead, and for a second Stiles wonders if maybe some quick tent sex would help de-stress him.

“Did she kill it again?” Derek mutters, throwing on his shirt. He pokes his head out of the tent, past Stiles’ shoulder, and then makes the whole thing moot by stomping out to glower at his sister. “Why are you even still here? Don’t you have stuff to do at school?”

“It’s called winter break, Derek,” Laura says. “Come on. You have a diploma somewhere in the attic, I know you didn’t just hole up in the studio the whole time.”

“Yeah, well, at least I got shit done in there. Cora’s going to finish hers before you get that thesis written.” Derek scruffs at his hair, which does absolutely nothing to straighten it out and about a zillion to accentuate the hotness of it, and then looks around till he spots the new sample bag. He takes it out of the cooler, wrinkles his nose, and then tosses it back in with a snort. “An owl. You killed an owl.”

Laura’s normally pretty cool, especially for an alpha heir, but for some reason, whenever she and Derek bicker, she reverts to a slightly taller, smoother version of the brat queen Cora likes to play at school. Except that Cora knows that even high schooler won’t buy a dramatic hair toss these days, and Laura seems to be auditioning for every shampoo commercial, ever.

“It got in my face, all right? I’d like to see you not chomp down when something’s going at your cute little puppy mug,” she says, in a half-irritated, half-mocking coo. She reaches out and tries to brush at Derek’s cheek with her fingers, then smirks when he fends her off. “Oh, wait. That’s what you did to the Trans’ chicken that one—”

“That was seven years ago, Laura,” Derek snaps. Then pulls his shoulders back and smirks right back at her. “When I wasn’t a couch-bumming grad student who’d rather bug my little brother’s alpha than sit down with Mom and learn about—”

 _“Children,”_ goes Peter’s voice, absolutely dripping with contempt, and they both jump. 

Then frown in confusion. Laura swivels around, scanning the woods, while Derek sniffs and then turns around. Then gives Stiles a betrayed look.

“What?” Stiles says. He closes out of the sound clip and swipes to his text messages, hoping against hope that reinforcements will be showing up soon. He’d even take a baby ranger at this point, and never mind their amazingly lamentable aiming skills. “Just because he got stuck in a mediation doesn’t mean that Peter can’t be with us. In fact, I think he would insist on it, if I let him know what’s going on.”

Laura snorts but he catches that little thoughtful look in her eye, and makes a mental note to himself to check Derek’s phone for pranking for the next week. “Low blow, Stiles. Though as an alpha to an alpha, good one.”

“Yeah, well, as the Service point person, _stop killing shit_.” Stiles sets his laptop down on the portable worktable, kicking the sample cooler shut as he does, and then pulls up the topographical map to check where they are.

The lucky thing, if there’s been anything lucky about this whole mess, is that it happened in winter, when the animals really aren’t moving around too much. Well, and that they were able to backtrack that poor were-lynx girl’s movements and confirm that she’d mostly stayed on the roads and so had had minimal chances to interact with the wildlife. They still have to sweep the whole preserve for rabies victims anyway, but there’s just a very narrow hot spot band that they’re really worried about.

“Otherwise we might as well just have the kids out, for all the help you are,” Derek adds. He moves to stand behind Stiles, resting his chin on Stiles’ shoulder and adding a nice warm blanket of werewolf to Stiles’ back. And also so he can continue to smirk at his sister from safety. “You know McCall’s got you beat in live take-downs?”

“Scott wants to go to veterinary school, dumbass, and he volunteers at the animal shelter on the weekends. He’s got practice in luring wild animals to him Disney-style,” Laura says.

“Don’t make me get phone-Peter out again,” Stiles says, glowering at both of them. He crosses off Laura’s last assigned plot and then scans over the updates from the past couple hours (baby rangers are clearing their plots out at a nice clip, lousy shots or not). “Also, as awesome as the image of Scott singing while his fairy godmice make him a pretty new dress is, he’s got you _both_ beat. And I think it’s because he actually takes the quarantine cages with him.”

Laura starts to look mulish again, all narrowed eyes and wide stance, and Stiles just loses what’s left of his patience. Screw alpha etiquette, and this isn’t pack stuff anyway, it’s Service and that means she needs to listen to him.

So he slaps shut his laptop and then leans over it, shaking off Derek. He does make sure he doesn’t push his head higher than hers, but he lets his bad temper bleed into the Nemeton, and even if it’s snoozing, he’s standing right on top of its roots. It rattles its branches and spreads them a little, sort of the tree equivalent of a sleepy snarl, and Laura’s eyes widen a little as she steps back.

“Look, I don’t want to call my dad, but I will. Because all these animals, they’re not covered by hunting quotas and we’ve got to justify all the kills with lab results. And this is not the kind of shit that we’re going to pull strings about, okay?” Stiles tells her. “This is standard vac and quarantine. At least, it’s supposed to be, but you’re turning this into a goddamn bloodbath. I mean, honestly, do you want to end up having to go to the supermarket for meat? Because at this rate, you’re not going to have anything left to hunt for actual food.”

Derek’s stepped back but his hands are still on Stiles’ hips. They’re very still and very tense, though he isn’t holding tight on Stiles. He might be leaning into a half-crouch; his breath comes and goes on the back of Stiles’ neck like he is. Stiles can’t see Derek’s face, and isn’t stupid enough to glance back, but he’d bet his finally-functioning jeep that Derek’s got his eyes firmly on Laura.

Who’s staring at Stiles with her lips pressed tightly together, a kind of measuring look in her eyes that he’s not sure he’s seen before. In comparison to her mother, Laura’s always been very laidback and self-deprecating about her alpha status, coming off a lot more like an especially aggressive beta (except with how non-family werewolves automatically back up just at her scent). But she _is_ one, and unlike him, she was born into it. She doesn’t have to try to look and act like it; she just is it.

“Yeah,” she says after a long pause. She takes a deep breath, then gives him a tight nod. “Yeah. You’re right, yeah…I’m sorry. I’m…yeah, I don’t know. I screwed up these last few and I’m honestly—I’m not trying to, really. I don’t know what’s going on.”

Stiles lets out a breath he hadn’t realized he was holding, and feels Derek’s hands suddenly close around his hips like the other man needs it to support himself. “Well, do you need a break? You don’t have to take a shift every day, you know. Especially now that lacrosse practice is finally over. Jackson’s freed up—”

“He’s not going to be better,” Derek mutters, snuggling up so he talks right into the back of Stiles’ head.

“—so Scott and Allison are going to help him with his tracking,” Stiles finishes, with a backwards elbow. Which is going to do nothing to Derek’s abs of molded concrete, but it’s the thought that counts. “And Dad was saying that Francis was coming by or something, so—”

“Yeah. Yeah, but I have to be around for that.” Laura looks oddly embarrassed. In that she’s both embarrassed and relieved, and at the same time, trying to order Derek to do something with her eyes, and her face isn’t quite that flexible with the multi-tasking. “He’s, um, he’s helping me show Isaac a few things.”

Stiles blinks. “Oh. Oh, okay—wait, does Isaac—”

“We cleared it with your dad and everything. We’re just going into the sections bordering our land anyway, and I had Isaac read all the stuff you guys sent over,” Laura says, a little defensively.

Come to think of it, Isaac and Scott had been holed up together a lot, muttering over Scott’s binder and going quiet whenever Stiles walked by. But Stiles had just figured they were moaning together about how to deal with the new plays he managed to feed Finstock (because if he has to put up with that nutcase _and_ Jackson’s determination to keep a no-loss record for senior year, he might as well take the opportunity to test out urban assault tactics).

“Okay,” Stiles says. “Well. Anyway. Whatever’s the matter, just…figure it out, would you? And if you need something, like equipment or whatever, let us know. But you need to stop killing them all. Tranq and vac, tranq and cage, these are our mottos.”

“I thought your motto was ‘if there’s no body, you can’t prove it,’” Laura says dryly. She’s back to flipping her hair and smirking at Derek when she thinks she can get away with it. “Oh, unless you mean the Service, in which case that’d be ‘caring for the land and serving people.’”

Stiles rolls his eyes. “Congratulations, you’ve read the magnets in the gift shop. Look, why don’t you just hold off on your next patrol for now? I’ll reschedule it for when the others get here.”

For a second he thinks Laura’s going to argue with him, but then she just shrugs and asks if he can email her the revised schedule, because she wants to head back to town and run some errand for her mother. So Stiles says yeah, of course, and they do some paperwork for her latest kill, and then Laura lopes off into the woods.

“I guess I should just be glad that Cora’s got no interest whatsoever in environ—mmph!” Stiles says to Derek.

And Derek says nothing, because Derek is twisting them around to make out against the worktable. The very light, folding, not at all up to this worktable. Stiles scrabbles behind him to make sure his laptop doesn’t fall off, then goes the counterintuitive but much more effective route of shoving Derek instead.

So then they’re stumbling over the tent pegs till they’re up against the Nemeton. Derek grunts, his hands jarred off Stiles’ hips to hook into Stiles’ pants pockets. At least, that’s what Stiles thinks—till suddenly he’s got a werewolf kneeling in front of him, sucking fervently on his cock.

Outdoor sex kind of comes with the tree guardian job. Or it’s a hell of a perk for all the shitty nights Stiles has to get up and trek out and see what’s up with the Nemeton, depending on how you look at it, and when he’s staring down at Derek and he’s got dark, intensely hot, _furnace_ hot eyes staring back up over reddening lips stretched around his cock—just this gorgeous man who, also, can completely take out a rampaging bear and not break a sweat? Yeah, it’s a perk.

Derek snakes up Stiles, right after licking off the last drop of come from his cock, and then nuzzles into his throat, purring like the most fucked-out motorboat in the world. And Stiles figures out why when he reaches down to return the favor, only to find Derek’s fly already open and his cock hanging out in the breeze, tell-tale wet smear over its head. He wraps his hand around it anyway and Derek shivers, then purrs even louder, flattening his groin into Stiles.

“Okay, not that that wasn’t the awesomest way to end a work argument, but what brought that on?” Stiles gasps.

And Derek maybe hitches. His guilty hitch, the same one he makes when he’s just sexed Stiles up because Stiles’ dad is after him for paperwork and he wants Stiles to hide him, or he accidentally dyed Stiles’ clothes gothic with his terrible laundry skills and devotion to top-end black jeans, the kind where you can’t sit on white furniture.

Stiles is going to ask what that’s about, except then he remembers what they’d just been doing. And Derek’s tendency to get hot over him beating the shit out of people. Not that that’d been anywhere near an actual challenge, but…Stiles gets him by the shoulder and pushes him back, and then looks him in the eye. “Derek. Derek, please tell me that you didn’t just blow me for talking back to your sister.”

“You weren’t talking back,” Derek says. He looks like he’s explaining that the day ends because the sun goes down over the horizon. “She was wrong. You were right.”

“Um, thank you, but…ugh, this—this should be weird but it’s…no, it’s a little weird. Not so weird that I’m going to turn down the orgasm, thanks, no, that was _great_ , but seriously?” Stiles thunks his head back against the tree, looking at Derek who looks both defensive and confused, because where is the question, o alpha. And then he just sighs and notes that werewolves reward any kind of alpha badassery with sex, and pets his beta’s neck. “Whatever. Anyway. What’s her problem?”

Derek sneaks in for another nuzzle, then reluctantly pulls back. He doesn’t actually get off till Stiles lets go of his cock, and even then, he waits to zip up until Stiles has tucked himself back in, as if they might get another round if he puppy-eyes hard enough.

Which, to be fair, does sometimes happen, but they’re on the clock right now.

“She’s an alpha?” Derek says.

Stiles hunts up a bottle of hand sanitizer and squishes the gel between his fingers while looking at Derek. “Hah. You’re going to have to do better than that. And don’t say it’s her boyfriend, ‘cause I know you guys have more control than that. Or bring up the thesis,” he says when Derek opens his mouth. “Man, _I’m_ sick of hearing about that damn thing.”

“Well, she’s been frustrated a lot. Breaking dishes left and right, Mom’s banned her from cooking, too,” Derek says, shrugging. He borrows the hand sanitizer from Stiles and then pointedly pops a strip of breath freshener into his mouth, staring at Stiles like a…Stiles really, really tries not to go to the dog joke place, but sometimes Derek just looks _exactly_ like a dog who’s convinced he’s earned his treat. “No idea, honestly. Nothing bugging her that wasn’t already bugging her.”

“Thank you for making sure Scott doesn’t die of embarrassment when he gets here and gets a whiff,” Stiles says, rolling his eyes. “So. Laura. Even if you don’t know, the aggro is getting a little worrying. Do I need to get my dad involved? Or your mom?”

Derek winces at the first, looks downright nervous at the second, but he actually takes a few seconds to consider the question. Also, gets his leather jacket on, and then rummages around for…a spray bottle of scent masker.

“If you really don’t want them to smell that we’ve been out all night,” he says, all smug grin. He leans over and spritzes a little into the tent, and then sprays the worktable. The equipment crates.

He’s about to spray the Nemeton when Stiles wrestles the bottle away from him, giving him a little cuff on the side of the neck. Derek lowers his head, but mostly so he can whuff into Stiles’ hair. Then he sobers, his arms going around to loosely ring Stiles’ waist. 

“I think you warned her enough,” he says. “I mean, like I said, I don’t know what’s up with her, but Laura isn’t trying to step on your toes. If she does it again…honestly, I think we should call Peter first. I get that the Service needs to get this done right, but Laura and Mom are being touchy again. It’d be good if we didn’t make that worse.”

“Well, okay, I pretty much said I’d give her another chance anyway,” Stiles mutters. “But since you mention it, I think I’m gonna text Peter anyway. Maybe he’ll know what’s up.”

* * *

But Peter, unfortunately, is still tied up with work. He texts back that if it’s urgent, he can skip his lunch for a call, but otherwise he’d really rather answer that kind of question in person.

As much as Stiles’ insatiable need to know wants to lie, Stiles just tells Peter that he can wait till they meet up after Peter’s work is done, and then he heads off to the morning briefing at the Service office. Thankfully, his dad’s still preoccupied with the fallout from the were-lynx girl (who is in the ICU, but they’re cautiously optimistic she’ll make it) and doesn’t ask for updates beyond how many more sections they’ve got to sweep.

“Oh, and can you drop this off at the Argents’ place?” his dad asks, handing Stiles a small package. “You were picking up Allison anyway, right?”

“No…but hey, I’m sure Scott won’t mind getting us on the way,” Stiles says, hastily changing his answer when he sees how harried his dad looks. “Also, is this one of the new electric sabers?”

His dad looks up from his phone long enough to silently inform Stiles that being jealous over Chris getting the newest toys is not acceptable. And also, mockery will be met with extra requisition forms the next time Stiles wants something. “He broke his, so I got the Service to authorize a replacement.”

“God, Dad, don’t look like I’m going to swap it out for an older model, okay, I don’t do that to people we like,” Stiles says, drawing himself up. “Besides, Lydia’s already souping up mine.”

“After all appropriate _testing_ ,” his father says. “Now scoot, son. I got the CDC on conference call next.”

Derek’s still at the tree, watching over their camp, so Stiles texts him that they’ll be a little longer getting back, and then calls Scott with the change of plans. Turns out that suits Scott just fine, since Allison’s actually meeting him at a deli near Stiles’ house so they can pick up lunch stuff for Melissa, who finagled a short special assignment giving Chris in-home care.

“Because I’m terrible at cooking,” Allison says, making a face. “Dad’s done all of that since Mom died, and it’s really embarrassing, but I think if it wasn’t for Melissa and the Hales, we’d have starved to death by now.”

“You’re not that bad,” Scott says soothingly.

Allison is unconvinced, and is clutching her huge bag of containers from the prepared-foods counter with a grip Stiles recognizes well from his and his father’s days of scouting out every twenty-four hour diner within five miles of wherever they were living at the time. “Scott. I nearly set our house on fire because I forgot to take the foil off the frozen dinner,” she sighs.

“You just scorched the counter a little,” Scott says.

Allison shares a skeptical, if affectionate, look with Stiles, and then changes the subject to the replacement saber. She’s still not good enough with practice rods that her dad will give her one, but she chats happily with Stiles about voltages till they make it over to the Argents’ place.

Where, surprisingly enough, Laura’s standing on the porch with a big cooler at her feet. She sniffs as they walk up, then sighs. “I told Mom we should ask first, but she’d just made up a huge batch of sausages,” she says. “She says these are the ones your father liked from Thanksgiving.”

“Well, the more food, the better,” Allison says cheerfully. With a little bit of side-eye, because she is in no way missing the Hales’ recent about-face and all the implications, but she’s a practical girl and does not stand on pride when it comes to Talia’s cooking.

Allison unlocks the front door and goes in, then almost makes Scott walk into her and drop the deli food when she stops suddenly.

“Dad!” she says. “Oh, hey, I thought you were napping.”

“Been sleeping way too much, wanted to try and actually make it through an afternoon for once,” Chris mumbles, and then blinks hard when he sees the rest of them.

He looks good for a guy who got slammed into the top of an ambulance, but his shave’s noticeably spottier on one side of his face, and his bruises are still dark enough to show through his clothes. Well, also, his clothes are kind of thin and well-worn: white, short-sleeved cotton tee, loose gray cotton pants.

Chris is in great shape for his age, Stiles notes, then makes a face at himself for checking out his dad’s boyfriend. And then realizes that Laura is making the same expression. He and Laura look at each other, and for a moment, they are one with the thought that Stiles’ dad _never_ needs to know about this.

“So…” Chris says uncertainly.

“Mom. Sorry.” Laura plops her bag into Scott’s arms, so that Scott becomes a grunting, semi-frantically juggling pile of food containers, and then steps back from the front door. “She also wanted to offer you guys the house-cleaning service we use, but Peter talked her out of it.”

“Oh…thanks,” Chris mutters, shoulders hunching under his sling. He moves aside so that Scott can perambulate in the direction of the kitchen, then grimaces as Scott blindly goes in the wrong direction. “No, you—”

“I got it, Dad. Sorry, Stiles, just a sec,” Allison says, grabbing at Scott’s elbow. “Be right back, I swear.”

“No prob, we’ll just wait out here,” Stiles says. He tosses Allison the saber box and then steps back next to Laura.

He’s going to get the door, too, but just then Chris steps forward, getting in the way. Chris grabs the knob and leans a little hard on it, pain flickering over his face as he curls slightly into his sling side. Stiles’ dad had said the guy hadn’t had any serious injuries, but it’s the fourth day after and he still looks pretty stiff.

“So you’re—where are you going again?” Chris says. He blinks hard, and then again, fighting back some drug. He’s maybe slurring a little, too.

“Just working on vaccinating exposed wildlife,” Stiles says slowly. The guy doesn’t seem stoned, exactly, but he definitely looks like his mind’s not staying in its usual tracks. “Allison’s gonna help us with the birds. Are you okay?”

“What did they give you?” Laura asks, nose wrinkled. “You smell like—like I don’t even know.”

Chris looks irritably at her, and also, a little clearer. “That’s the muscle relaxant, that’s just—oh, yeah, sorry.” His eyes slide to a bit past Stiles, then jerk back. “Your dad said. Right. Sorry, I…kind of forgot what day it was…”

“I’m—I was with Peter on not bugging you so much, but seriously, do you—do you need somebody to come over and wipe the place down or something?” Laura says. She’s both amused, in a very uneasy way, and just plain uncertain. “I mean, really, it’d be no big deal, and it’d be really dumb if you killed yourself, I don’t know, falling on a mop…”

“No,” Chris says, very clearly and very firmly. He pauses and visibly—and slowly, damn, what relaxant did they give him—rearranges his face into a slightly politer scowl. “No. Thank you, but no. We can handle it.”

“It’s not just because Mom’s being all political, all right?” Laura says in an exasperated tone. “You did step in front of me—”

“Hey, he said—” Stiles starts.

“Chris? What’s the problem, is the deli saying I didn’t prepay again?” Melissa’s voice calls at the same time. 

A second later, she pops out from the basement door, frowning and holding a short stack of folded laundry. Which comes in handy when she gets all the way up, realizes Stiles is there too, and needs something to cover up her legs. Because she’s just wearing what is obviously Chris’ shirt.

“Stiles!” Melissa hisses. Then she curses, grabbing at a falling towel. She gets it, but fumbles back into the wall, cursing again as she hits hip-first.

She’s a little banged up too, with bruises and scrapes on her legs and one forearm, and Chris hastily turns back to her. “Shit. Shit, sorry,” he mutters, reaching out. “Here—”

“Oh, my God, go back to bed,” Melissa mutters. She softens the order with a frazzled smile, then stuffs the laundry under her elbow and uses his outstretched arm as a handle for pulling him over to lean against her.

The shirt she’s got on has a half-buttoned, kind of loose collar, at least on her, and it droops to show cleavage and Stiles promptly averts his eyes, because he might have seen Melissa dressed up before, but with all the make-up and perfect hair that was kind of like seeing her wear a costume. And this is—well, of course it’s real, but it’s _real_ real, real like they really are doing this, and…whatever, he’s happy for her but he doesn’t want that in his brainspace. “Um, so Scott actually picked it up for you, and he’s—”

Melissa starts, then begins to look resigned just as Scott and Allison come out of the kitchen. Scott takes one look and then hides behind his girlfriend, unflinchingly brave werewolf that he is. “Mom! Hey! Um, put it on the second shelf in the fridge, so we’re gonna go now, call me if you need anything, you’re good, right?” he babbles into Allison’s ponytail.

And of course that just melts Melissa’s irritation. “Thank you, baby,” she says. She’s stuffing laundry against Chris’ chest without actually letting him take it from her, so he can look embarrassed about that instead of at them. “No, we’re fine, now be careful out there, just because you’ve been vaccinated—”

“Doesn’t mean I’m allowed to get hurt, I know, I know,” Scott says, simultaneously sighing and scooting Allison towards the door. “Okay, bye! Text you when we’re done!”

“And let us know—” Laura starts again.

Chris barely has time to set his jaw before Melissa’s lunged forward, determined face on. Stiles thinks she’s going for Scott, for whatever reason, and he grabs his buddy and pulls him and Allison through the doorway. He’s going to turn Scott around so Scott can see, except that Melissa gets the door and shoves it shut almost on Scott’s heels.

Well, almost. She does pause to look Laura right in the eye, give her a very big, very back-off smile, and then shake her head. “We’re good, thank you,” she says, and then she shuts the door.

“Okay, then,” Laura says after a second. She pushes her hair back from her face, then tugs at the leather coat that all Hales seem to be born with (even Peter’s got a couple, although he usually leaves his tossed over a chair to announce his presence). “Possessive much? It’s not like he’s Mom’s or my type.”

“She’s not jealous, she just doesn’t want you guys thinking you get anybody you feel like getting,” Scott says. Frowning, but calm. In fact, he looks at Laura like he’s just a little confused as to why she’s even asking, because she obviously should know better. And then he walks off with a very proud Allison on his arm, pulling out his car keys to beep the doors unlocked.

Stiles grins. “Ladies and gentlemen, my best friend, Scott McCall.”

Laura rolls her eyes but doesn’t make any more of a fuss. She lets Stiles go off the porch first, as if she’s just going to get back into her car. But then she stops with the door open and waves at them.

At Scott, actually, and when he rolls down his window and sticks out his head, Laura holds up her phone and looks weirdly reluctant. “Hey, so, can I assume lacrosse stuff is over?” she asks him. “I need to pick up Isaac.”

“Yeah, it’s over,” Scott says. “But I thought he was walking home?”

“Oh, yeah, I know, he said he wanted to change first,” Laura says. Then she gets into her car, with a waved thanks.

“Why doesn’t she just call him?” Allison says, staring at Laura’s bumper. “Are they not allowed to talk? I mean, I know he lives with a foster family and not with the Hales, but if they’re pack anyway…isn’t that weird?”

An excellent question, and one that Stiles lets Scott know he’d also like the answer to by wrapping his arms around Scott’s headrest and leaning forward between the two front seats. Scott shoots Stiles a long-suffering look, as if Stiles isn’t giving him a good, solid forty percent of the rear windshield to work with, and then cautiously backs down the driveway.

“I don’t think it’s anything weird, I think she just doesn’t like calling him if it’s not an emergency,” Scott mutters. He stops for a lady and her dog who are a good yard away to cross behind them, then inches towards the road. Then stops again, as another car snails across the driveway. “You know, because she’s his alpha so he’d have to prioritize it, and she doesn’t want him to have to worry about that kind of stuff. Though I don’t really know, it’s not like Isaac and I talk about her much.”

“Really?” Stiles says.

Scott looks just a tiny bit exasperated. “Not _everybody_ is obsessed with the Hales, you know.”

“Yeah, yeah, you and your mom and the amazing McCall ability to resist the hottest people in town,” Stiles says. “But Isaac’s never bugged you about, I don’t know, what the no-pack life is like? I mean, he seems chill as he is, but he’s not even curious?”

“Maybe he just doesn’t want to put Scott on the spot,” Allison says, with a disapproving look over her shoulder, as if Stiles hasn’t earned his Scott needling badge a zillion times over just with talking Scott through the early days of their dating. And then she smirks at him. “And _not_ all of the hottest people.”

Stiles snorts, even as he appreciates the rare Allison snark moment. “What, you mean your dad? Okay, doting daughter and all, but—”

“Well, your dad too, right?” Allison says, eyes big and innocent. She tilts her head and then smiles sweetly. “I mean, not my type, obviously. But there’s a reason why all the single women in town have started jogging through the preserve and I can see it too, if he’s going to go around all the time with a muddy shirt.”

“Can we—can we not have this fight, seriously?” Scott sighs. “I’m trying to drive here. And I like both of your dads, but not like that, so can we just call it a draw or something? Please?”

Allison and Stiles look at each other for another second, and then Allison leans over and pecks Scott on the cheek, while Stiles snickers as he plops back into the backseat. And then he and Allison bump fists.

“Okay, Scott. Two hottest dads in town, agreed,” Stiles says. “No wonder Melissa’s all standing her ground with Laura.”

Scott moans and gets about as close to rubbing his face into the wheel as he can, while still driving like a grandma. “Stop talking or I am not driving, I swear to God,” he mutters, finally pulling into the road. “Besides, Mom’s not with them just because they’re—they’re—”

“Hot?” Allison says. She gives Scott another kiss on the cheek, then fist-bumps with Stiles again. “Of course not. But trust me, the DILF thing is _definitely_ something to brag about.”

“Talk about somebody that’s not a DILF, please,” Scott moans. “Please. Right now. If either of you love me.”

* * *

Well, Francis is a pretty good slab of eye-candy himself and he’s technically a _stepdad_ (which makes him a SDILF? SILF?). He doesn’t go out as much as the other Hales—he does most of the administrative back-end for Talia’s and Peter’s mediation business—and his non-werewolf hobbies seem to mostly consist of antiquing and rare books collecting, neither of which lends itself to badassery. The wardrobe of comfy, worn old sweaters and jeans doesn’t help either; Stiles appreciates it for the partial camouflage it is _because_ it’s so damn effective at taming down the guy’s lumberjack beard and granite facial features.

And then Francis ditches that stuff for hunts, and out steps some insanely beefcake cross between a werewolf and a Viking. Warrior topknot, check. Long trailing mane of dark hair, lush enough that even Laura looks a little piqued, check. Being at least half a head taller than anybody else, with shoulders that look like they could pile-drive a mountain and pecs that could crack an egg between them, check. 

“What happened to your shirt?” Derek asks, because Derek is a hypocritical asshole.

Also, an asshole with an insecurity streak, even if Stiles is literally sitting on his shoulders right now, trying to fasten a motion detector to a tree branch (so hopefully, less midnight calls by the tree). So Stiles took a look. It’s kind of hard not to, what with how Francis takes up something like a quarter of the landscape. But it was just a look, and it’s certainly not the visual tongue-licking that Lydia and Allison (who’s admittedly blushing madly over it, but who’s still doing it) are giving Francis.

“The ranger with the ornithology degree, I can’t remember her name,” Francis says, not pausing in helping Scott to unpack the tagging and blood sampling kits. Because he’s not even batting an eye at all the jealous vibes around, even from his stepkid. “She was helping us load up the SUV and then she caught the end on a box and turned, and the damn thing just unraveled.”

“It was about fifty thousand years old, anyway. I never understand how your sweaters even make it through the washer in one piece. And sure, that was an accident,” Laura snorts. She’s apparently seen the Francis show enough times to develop some immunity, because she just flicked her eyes over his bare chest and then sighed, same as she does whenever Derek wrecks an outfit. “Okay. So everybody gets one, right?”

“Well, better take two each, if people can carry them,” Stiles says. He finally gets the motion detector to stop twisting to face the tree, and gives Derek’s head a thigh-squeeze to get him to let Stiles down. And tries not to squeal as Derek totally sneaks in an ass-grope on the way down. “There’s a _lot_ of raccoons holed up in this area, a lot of dead hollow trunks. I wouldn’t be surprised if we go through a whole kit just on one tree.”

Nodding, Francis quickly rearranges the kits on the ground. He holds out a pair to Jackson, who slings them both under one arm and then grabs another pair, apparently for Lydia, but really so he can make his biceps flex enough to show through his clothes. Lydia sighs, but gives one arm an approving pat.

“So how do you want to do this?” Francis says, handing another pair to Isaac. He looks from Stiles to Laura, and then back. “Peter said when he takes people out, he usually works in pairs, but that’s for bigger animals.”

“Yeah, that’s not going to work for these,” Stiles says. He pauses, because for all that he wants this done right, he doesn’t want to be that guy who lectures people on stuff they know better than him. But Francis just looks curious, and Laura’s keeping her mouth angelically shut while Derek glowers at her, and everybody else…maybe isn’t so much of an expert. This is suburbia, after all, and the stuff Stiles drags Scott into is usually a bit bigger than a raccoon. “Well, we’re trying to poke them out of their dens, you’d need what, at least three? One to poke, one to catch, one to shoot the darts?”

Laura shifts, then pauses as everybody looks at her. Then she shrugs diffidently. “That’d work, but Francis and I should stay together, so that’d leave one group with no official Service person, or liaison.”

She’s assuming that Stiles and Derek will go together, which…doesn’t have to be the case, but Derek is not, in any way, a mentoring type, so okay, effectively it’s true. And Scott would count as official Service, if that was a publicly-known thing, which it isn’t, even if everybody who’s here knows about it. And blah blah blah keeping up appearances blah blah ugh.

“Okay, two groups, and I guess we’ll just be lopsided,” Stiles sighs.

So Stiles and Derek end up taking Allison, Jackson and Lydia, while Scott goes with Isaac and the other Hales. Except they all stick together in a big group for the first tree, so that Stiles can show them how to humanely, safely live-capture wildlife for treatment and research purposes.

Well, so he can talk about it, and then Francis can demonstrate how to stick your head in a tree and roar, and send a bunch of shellshocked raccoons scurrying out of their den. They’re so dazed that they seem almost grateful to be tranqed, and their little twitchy faces and paws make Stiles feel a tiny bit guilty. Even if it’s for their own good.

“That’s not standard, of course,” Francis says, brushing bark chips off his face. “Only do that if you’re sure that they can’t squeeze back down and bite off your nose.”

Isaac and Jackson, who looks a little more squeamish than usual, silently nod, and Stiles sighs and just reminds everybody that there’s a reason why the kits come with telescoping rods. “But also, if you’re tranqing them while they’re still in the den, you’d better make sure you counted them right,” he says. “Like Francis says, your rabies vaccine shot is not going to prevent them from performing freehand cosmetic surgery on you.”

Then he steps back to let Scott demonstrate how to draw blood samples and inject the vaccine, because Scott’s good at making that sort of thing look easy without also coming off like a creepy mad scientist. He gives Derek, who’s edging around to get up behind Jackson (not that the guy’s going to pull a runner, however hard he’s swallowing, but Derek’s very thorough about his second-in-command role like that), a little goose on the ass as payback. Grins as Derek whines under his breath, and then moves aside to check his phone.

Francis also goes with him, although the guy’s not trying to eavesdrop or anything. He starts stacking the empty crates, then pauses when he realizes Stiles is looking at him. “I used to work for the Coast Guard,” he says. “Did animal rescue, so I think I’ve got a pretty good handle on this part.”

“Coast Guard?” Stiles says. “Really? You guys did beached whales and stuff like that?”

Peter and Derek gave Stiles the rundown on Francis, so Stiles already knew about the Coast Guard stint, but he didn’t think they handled animal rescue. Which, to his credit, Francis picks up on and immediately addresses. “Oh, not the Guard, but I was up in San Francisco and we had a program to lend our boats to rescue groups on off-days. And yeah, we got beached whales, but my line was usually selkies trapped in old nets, stuff like that.”

“Because you’d be pretty pissed off at the world if you almost drowned and then looked like you were going to lose body parts to gangrene, and you might want to chomp the first person who came along, even if they were helping you out?” Stiles guesses.

“Exactly.” Francis puts all the crates into a neat stack, which he then loads back into his SUV. He wipes absently at some sweat running down his back, because it’s a balmy forty-something Fahrenheit, and shuts the back of his car. “Can’t blame them, really. Or the other volunteers for wanting the big werewolf to go first, but I have to admit, sometimes you just really want to punch out people. Mild concussion’s not going to be much on top of the net injuries, and you know they’ll feel a lot better once you get them to the hospital.”

Stiles snorts before he can help himself. Derek glances over, brow raised, and then rolls his eyes when Stiles flaps a hand at him to pay attention to Scott.

And Laura’s looking over too, but she ducks her head before Stiles can gesture at her. “Hey, so are things good at home?” Stiles asks Francis. “I mean. Not that I heard anything, or…well, look—”

“Are they squabbling again?” Francis sighs, looking at his stepkids.

“…so, before I answer that question, I hate to be rude but we don’t really talk and just because I’m with Peter and Derek, doesn’t mean I’m all up on your personal business, and, um, so, are you just asking? Or…are you _asking_?” Stiles says. Because also, they are well within werewolf hearing range, and as passionate as Scott can get about his future veterinary career, Stiles doesn’t think his buddy has the charisma to hold everybody’s attention.

Francis glances at him, then turns around. Scans the woods till he settles on a nearby tree, then frowns. Reaches up and rubs his beard, and then clears his throat.

“Think I see mountain lion markings,” he calls over his shoulder. “Going to check that it’s not a nearby den, we’ll be right back.”

And then he trots off, with Stiles belatedly following. “Oh, that was _smooth_ ,” Stiles says, as soon as they’re over the hill and down by the creek at the base. They’re still within eavesdropping range, but a werewolf would have to really—read: obviously—be trying to filter out the background noise. “You practice that?”

“It comes in the werewolf handbook we all get when we’re born,” Francis says dryly. He grins with a hint of teeth, then sets his shoulders and runs his hand over the top of his head, and sobers up. “So, you were asking whether I’m going to run to Talia?”

“I don’t want to be rude,” Stiles says again. “I’m sure you’re your own person and all.”

“But I’m also her mate, and she’s Talia, on top of being alpha.” Francis shrugs sympathetically. “I can’t say I’m not going to tell her. But if it’s something she already knows, like that Laura’s making a nuisance of herself, well, no point, is there?”

Stiles considers this, and then decides that it’s a reasonable enough stance to take. Packs aren’t like some hippie free-everything sharing commune, like a disturbing number of outsiders seem to think. But then, non-pack structure groups have their own issues with secret-keeping, as any covert ops professional could tell you. “Well, since you went there, you mind me asking what’s the deal with that anyway? I mean, not that the Service minds the extra hands, but…we really don’t need her.”

And Francis finally starts to look a little uncomfortable. He scratches at his jaw and looks around, and then goes over to a tree. Sniffs it, swipes at the bark, and Stiles is just about to call him out when he heaves out a sigh and turns around. “Not that I can speak from firsthand experience, but if I had to put a label on it, I guess I’d call it alpha growing pains. It’s tricky, you know.”

“What, me being in charge? Because she’s never been really that touchy about having another alpha around,” Stiles says. “I mean. Me, anyway. I don’t know about her and Talia.”

“Ah, no, actually, I don’t think I’d look at it like that. I’d—look, you seem pretty bright, but just to check, you’ve asked her, right?” Francis says.

Stiles rolls his eyes. “Yeah, and she doesn’t know why she’s running home whenever, and can’t keep herself from killing owls, and getting up in Derek’s face.”

“Well, that last one, I’m pretty sure is down to him being her little brother,” Francis says, amused. He swipes at the tree one last time, then walks back towards Stiles. “I don’t want to get too detailed, too many conversations I haven’t been there for, but just keep in mind that Laura’s under a lot of pressure to prove herself, all right?”

And then he keeps on going, past Stiles and on up the hillside. They have been gone a while, Stiles supposes. Even Scott can’t stretch out vaccinations and tagging for that long. “As an alpha? When she’s going to inherit the Hale pack?” he says, trotting after Francis.

“Exactly.” Francis glances at Stiles, waiting for him to get it.

So it’s not like Stiles can’t see the pressure there, what with Talia’s rep and all, but it’s not like that’s new. Or like Talia’s going to be stepping down any time soon, barring some really unexpected, really horrible thing happening. “And even if that happens, it’s not like she’s on her own,” Stiles mutters. Then realizes that he’s talking aloud and Francis is listening. He grimaces, then decides he might as well keep spinning that thought out. “I mean, if she had to take over today, Peter would have a couple things to say. And wouldn’t you?”

“Me? Oh, no way.” Francis laughs and runs his hand over the top of his head, then flicks some twigs out of his hair. “No, no, not my bag. And if it had been, I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t have stood a chance with my wife. Her children come first, always.”

He doesn’t sound upset about it. Just says it like a fact, like he’s talking about natural phenomena or something like that. Stiles wasn’t really expecting any other reaction, but now that he’s actually getting it, he is a little curious how the guy can be so laidback, like he’s never even thought about it. And when that has to be real, because yeah, Talia (and/or Peter) would’ve sniffed out an act by now.

“I was a career omega when I met her. I think you know that, right?” Francis adds after a second. “I’d made my peace with what I wanted out of life way before Talia came into my life, and that did not include a pack.”

“And yet…here you are,” Stiles says.

Francis looks a little rueful. But he’s happy about it, definitely. He grins at the woods and it’s about as close as Stiles has ever seen him get to goofy. “Yeah, well, the Hales have this way of changing your world. You know that. And Talia…well.” He shakes his head, still grinning. “But I’m still pretty much the same guy. I love her and the kids, and believe me, I’m glad that Peter’s in my corner. But I’m in their pack and not the other way around, let’s be clear.”

“Which is what you want? No offense, okay? I’m just—I’m still figuring all this out.” Stiles shrugs a little ruefully himself. “Every time I think I get pack structure straight, I find out something new.”

“Well, it’s not like born werewolves have that down either, otherwise Peter and Talia wouldn’t make the money they do,” Francis says. “But yeah. It’s what I want. I have reasons why I didn’t want a pack, and they’re all still pretty valid. It’s just—I guess when you get older, sometimes you do look for somebody to take care of you once in a while. The omega life isn’t an easy one, even now.”

A tiny, tiny part of Stiles, the completionist, gotta-know-it-all part—and okay, the unapologetically pervy part—wants to clarify whether that extends to the bedroom or not. Because…well, Talia is Talia. And sometimes the way she sizes up his dad makes Stiles think that she’s not just looking for somebody who challenges her, she’s looking for somebody who’s a challenge. But Stiles does _not_ ask that, because one, he has learned something about tact and two, there are places he knows he should stay out of for his sanity’s sake, and certain scenarios involving his father fit within that.

“Anyway, it all fits with what she wants, too. When we got together, it was very important to Talia not to disrupt her pack’s lives any more than they’d already been, and she didn’t want some asshole who’d insist on taking priority over her kids. And I’m happy to help them out when and if they need it, but Derek and Laura were pretty well grown when I showed up,” Francis adds. He rounds the top of the hill, pauses to scrape some mud off his boots, and then calls down to the others that the mountain lion probably hunts regularly around here, but the mark’s at least a day old. “Cora, all right, not so much. But Cora’s their little sister and that has to be respected, too.”

“Huh. Well, okay. I’m not sure I…get all of that, but grist for the mill and all that,” Stiles says. “Thanks, anyway.”

Francis grins at him. “Sure. And don’t sweat it too much, Stiles. Some things just take a while.”

* * *

Jackson’s improved a lot since his pre-Thanksgiving hunts. In terms of his skills, anyway; he proves the personality’s not so different when Allison compliments him and he promptly preens and babbles something about visualizations and mental preparation.

“So basically, you’re pretending they’re all lacrosse balls, that’s what you’re saying,” Derek translates.

It’s kind of an asshole comment. But also, it’s kind of accurate.

“So I think if we switch site A4 with A16, we’d be able to cut off an extra five minutes of in situ travel time,” Lydia interrupts, before Jackson can get up in Derek’s face and get his pride further shattered. She swings out her clipboard with the topographical map printout, flips through the various transparencies layered over it, and then scribbles over one with a marker. “See?”

Stiles takes a look, then elbows Derek as his boyfriend starts getting that psychotic glint in his eye, edging up on Jackson. “But then we have to cut over the flooded part of the creek.”

He looks at their shoes. Nobody is wearing couture—although he’s pretty sure that Jackson and Lydia’s idea of work boots still cost somebody’s year’s salary—but except for Allison, none of them have waterproof shoes.

“Isn’t there a bridge?” Allison says, peering at the map. She blushes slightly. “I, um, Scott and I, we hang out at this spot nearby, I’m pretty sure I saw at least a plank going over it.”

“It’s underwater now,” Stiles says.

“It can’t be that deep, this isn’t the jungle,” Jackson says. “Why don’t we just jump it?”

Lydia and Stiles consider their equipment, including Lydia’s prototype handheld sonar scanner, of which they only have one, and which will take six months to rebuild if they should happen to break it. Then Lydia considers her boyfriend.

“If you’re that worried, give me all the delicate stuff,” Derek mutters. Then smiles toothily as Jackson’s head goes up.

Jackson’s eyes narrow, while Allison, who’s held out the longest but whose normally sunny optimism has gone sour, puts her hand over her face and scrunches up behind it like she’s nursing the perpetual headache her father has. But before it can break into outright warfare, both Derek’s and Stiles’ phones go off.

Frowning, Derek flicks out his phone and holds it up to his ear. “Laura?” he says. “What the hell did you kill now?”

Stiles has Scott, which means Allison recognizes the ringtone and instinctively twitches towards him before pulling back, smiling in embarrassment. So Stiles sighs and puts Scott on speaker. “What’s up, bro? We got a casualty list?”

 _“Uh. No?”_ Scott says. Somebody, well, multiple somebodies are talking in the background, sounding very worked up. _“Um. So there’s a bear.”_

“Well, at least it’s still alive,” Derek is muttering. Then he straightens up and slaps his hand against his forehead, glowering blankly into the woods. “Okay, seriously, do you _want_ me to call Peter? Because I will. You remember that shit that went down with you when you dumped Tyrese—”

 _“And the bear is, um, treed, and we’re not sure what to do with it,”_ Scott continues. _“It’s too high for us to hit with a dart, and I don’t think any of us can get up there without breaking the tree.”_

Stiles side-eyes Derek as he responds, because Scott sometimes can get a little shifty with the understatements, even though he has a hard time lying in a literal life or death situation. “That doesn’t sound that bad, we’ll just get a rifle. What else?”

Scott sighs. _“Also, this tree, it’s kind of growing out of the lake. So I think we might need a canoe or something like that, too.”_

“How do you accidentally throw a bear?” Derek snaps. “It’s a _bear_ , not a kid’s toy.”

“Okay. Okay, you know, we’re just going to—we’ll be right over. Just sit tight,” Stiles says, and then hangs up. Then he reaches over and hangs up Derek’s phone, too. And smiles while smooching his boyfriend, so they can just skip the frustrated growling and get to the clever solution.

“I guess we’d better be glad we ended up with the jackasses and not the idiots,” Jackson mutters to Lydia. “No wonder McCall and Lahey broke the fouling record this year.”

“ _Okay_ ,” Stiles says. “Going. Now. Going to see. Because let’s not judge before we observe, people? You never know, it might not be what it sounds like.”

* * *

It’s a bear up a tree growing out of six feet of water. Francis, sitting on a shoreline boulder, shares a look of resigned what-the-fuckery with the poor black bear. “The water does make it tricky,” he observes. “Can’t just dart it from the shore, it might faint in the water and drown. And it’s a bit deep for one of us to try and wrestle with it, if we’re trying to not have to fight for our lives.”

Laura, who’s nursing a shredded jacket sleeve and some serious injured pride, mumbles something noncommittal under her breath.

“Great,” Derek says. He stalks up and down the shore, then pulls out his phone. Then shoves it back into his pocket, because this is far enough into the preserve that cellphone reception’s a little spotty. “Great. Stiles’ dad is going to pitch a fit. He already was going to be mad about the owl—”

“I know, Derek,” Laura says.

“Maybe we could lure it over with some food?” Scott says to Stiles, while eyeing both of the Hale siblings. “We could call the rangers, they could pull out the cage.”

Isaac twitches a little, then smiles tightly when they look at him. “You have one that big?”

“You don’t need to watch,” Laura says. She takes a stab at looking less pissy, and it’s…not quite there, but Isaac seems to appreciate whatever she’s trying to do. He gives her a nod and she relaxes.

“Yeah, not like he’s learning anything except how to fuck up and get people mad at you,” Derek says.

Laura’s head snaps back around, and her voice goes halfway and then a bit beyond to an alpha snarl. “I _know_ , Derek.”

Scott promptly tugs Isaac back behind him, pushing him into Allison, who for once looks like she might not take offense at being protected. Jackson’s eyes go wide as eggs and, give him credit, he sticks an arm in front of Lydia. Who is thoughtfully snapping the high-frequency emitter onto her portable loudspeaker, even though Stiles is glaring at her with all his might, because pissy werewolves do not automatically mean test subjects.

“Well, I’m just saying—” Derek starts.

Stiles goes and grabs his boyfriend, and hustles him down the lake’s edge before the rest get a lesson in intra-pack challenge posturing. Not that Stiles thinks that Derek and Laura are going to throw down for real, but even when they’re just lobbing words around, the Hales can be pretty intense. And anyway, it’s not getting the damn bear out of the tree.

“I know,” Derek says when Stiles tells him exactly that. He scruffs his hand through his hair, then blows out his breath in frustration. Glances over his shoulder at his sister, who’s got her arms wrapped tightly around herself, staring at the bear, and then turns around and gives Stiles a grumpy variation on hangdog. “I know, I know, it’s just—God, she is so _annoying_ sometimes. I told her that Peter and I had this with you, but first she had to go on about how Peter shouldn’t have to drop work when she’s sitting on her ass, and then she had to tell him that _I_ wasn’t going to keep Mom from bugging the Argents—”

“It’s kind of a good point. No, no, no, I still love you best,” Stiles says, rubbing his hands up and down the sides of Derek’s neck. He probably could’ve timed that better; Derek almost never rants like this, just broods his gorgeous ass off, and from the sound of it Derek could use a good rant. “I’m just—I’m guessing Peter agreed with her on that?”

Derek rolls his eyes, but he’s calming down. “Something about how I’m not devious enough yet,” he says. His eyes flick to the side like he’s going to roll them a second time, and then he just sighs. “Love me best.”

“Yeah. Yeah, well.” Stiles has been sort of throwing those out as jokes since Thanksgiving, seeing whether it’ll be weird or not. He’s about eighty percent sure that Peter and Derek have discussed it and have decided (Peter’s decided) to let Stiles just work up to it however he feels like, because Derek gets a little smirky tilt to his mouth whenever he does it. Which, admittedly, is very hot. “Ranking next to your siblings and all. But look, she didn’t kill it. And that’s _great_ , because it’s a bear and that would be very, very hard to get by my dad. So…can we just get the bear out of the tree, and not terrify my friends in the process?”

Long, considering pause from Derek.

“Including Jackson, because fear’s only an effective teaching tool in small doses. And if he gets used to your snarly face, he’s just going to ignore you like Scott does,” Stiles points out.

“Fine,” Derek mutters. He runs his hand through his hair again, then pivots so he can sling his arm over Stiles’ shoulders. Snorts irritably when Stiles intercepts his hand from petting down Stiles’ chest, and then tilts his head back smugly as Stiles slips a hand up under his coat, hooks a thumb into his waistband and lets the rest of the hand hang down onto his ass.

When they get back over, Scott’s got everybody except for Laura gathered around something he’s doing on Lydia’s clipboard. “I had an idea,” he says, looking up at Stiles. “So what if we had some people go out on boats behind the tree, so the bear doesn’t just swim off, and everybody else hides? And then when it comes down, it’ll naturally go this way and we can dart it as it runs by?”

“Good thought, but I don’t think we can get boats that fast,” Stiles says. “They’re all in winter storage, remember?”

Scott deflates. Lydia immediately takes back her clipboard and then hands it to Jackson so that she can fiddle with one of her sound emitters and a stick. She makes faces as the stick’s bark chips her manicure.

“We don’t need a whole boat, or even anybody out in the water. We just need something out there that’ll scare it back to shore, don’t we? I know you werewolves want to be all macho—” she starts.

“I’m fine with staying dry,” Isaac quickly says. He looks quizzically at the rest of them, with just the faintest hint of don’t-be-an-overachieving-asshole.

Lydia pauses, also looks around, and then sniffs knowingly. “Well, then. We just need one of these—” she holds up the mini loudspeaker “—a werewolf roar sound clip, and a small flotation device. We’ve got that, don’t we?”

“Let me see what I can do,” Stiles says.

So he starts digging around in the spare bits of sampling kit, and the werewolves…start debating whose roar they’re going to use. Which is, apparently, some kind of complicated deal that involves a lot of comparative grunting, and teeth-baring, and Stiles totally sees Derek’s hand start to push off his leather coat before his boyfriend catches himself, and just pops the collar instead.

“Males,” Laura mutters, coming over to sit with Stiles and Allison. She takes up a perch on a rock so she can keep an eye on the bear and on the semi-circle of huffing and puffing werewolves. “Just so you two know, this isn’t werewolf culture. This is just dumbass culture.”

“Surprised you’re letting Isaac participate,” Stiles says. He holds a piece of tape out so that Allison can seal the plastic bag she’s just blown into a balloon. “Shouldn’t you keep an eye on bad habits like that?”

Laura’s brow ticks up. “Shouldn’t you?”

Stiles holds up his hands. “Hey, hey, Derek has venting needs. I’m willing to put up with a little posturing if it reduces the number of times I find him brooding in the dark.”

Allison giggles with her eyes shifting from him to Laura, like she’s not quite sure it’s a joke. “Really?”

“What? No, of course not. Derek’s a postmodern werewolf, he doesn’t brood in the dark. That’s _so_ nineties,” Stiles says. He starts taping together a little raft of sticks, and out of the corner of his eye, catches Laura shifting a little uncomfortably. “He does it where he’s got proper lighting, so somebody can snap a photo and text me to come cheer him up.”

“I told Cora to stop that,” Laura mutters. She definitely sounds testier than she needs to, and then tries to paste an unconvincing smirk over it when Allison frowns at her. Then she hops off the rock, because the bear’s just moved.

But it’s just climbed down to a broader set of branches. It snarls and Laura snarls back, eyes flashing red. The bear promptly ducks behind the trunk.

“I feel bad for it,” Allison says. “Don’t you think it’s getting tired?”

“It’ll be okay. I’ve seen them treed for longer—seen them hang out in trees to get honey for longer than this, for that matter,” Laura says. She gets back on the rock, with a little aggravated hand flip at Derek, who’s eyeballing them. “Well, Isaac needs friends his age. He can’t just be waiting around for me to come home. I tried to make Cora hang with him, but she just gave me some crap about messing up her social network.”

Allison nods sympathetically. She and Scott get a pass from that sort of school drama out of sheer, unstoppable good nature (that, and Scott being a lacrosse hero, and also, now that Stiles and Lydia are on their side, fear of retribution from unexpected corners), but she’s pretty vocal about how unlikeable she finds Cora’s little clique.

“Man, anybody who thinks alphas have the final word should deal with my little sister,” Laura adds. “I’m just hoping she grows out of them when she hits college. Because if that bunch of bitchy prom queens ends up in my pack, we’re gonna have words.”

“I’m pretty sure most of them are just for manipulative high school status reasons,” Stiles says. Away from school, Cora’s generally inoffensive, aside from the odd peanut-gallery comment. “She ditches them all the time if she’s bored.”

“Lydia’s pretty good at keeping them down too. Not that I really approve of that, she might be my friend but I just think that you can level people out without permanently crippling their ego,” Allison says, gathering up the makeshift balloons. She takes the twig raft Stiles made, too, and then gets up so she can carry them over to where Lydia is rewiring the loudspeaker. “But I guess if somebody’s got to do it, at least she’ll listen to Stiles?”

Laura snorts, then gives Allison’s hopeful smile an amused, but grateful, nod. As Allison steps off, Laura pulls herself higher up onto her rock and then grimaces as her shredded sleeve slaps against that. She pulls her coat off and examines the strips, then sighs.

“It’s still a couple days till Christmas,” Stiles says. “Plenty of time to hack somebody’s shopping list.”

“Nice thought, Stiles, but it’s traditional to skin and tan your own leather, otherwise you’re not really a Hale alpha,” Laura says. Holds the serious face for a few seconds, then raises a brow at him. “Not buying it?”

“I probably would, if Peter hadn’t spent last weekend educating me on the merits and demerits of the different tailors and couture labels he has on speed-dial.” As somebody who’s more of an enthusiastic experimenter than a real expert with needle and thread, Stiles can definitely appreciate somebody who’ll custom-fit your clothes without batting an eye at unusual alterations like, say, garrotes in the seams. But Peter has this insane color-coded system that, if Stiles wasn’t totally dreaming up that part, is keyed to the lunar cycle. “So hey, you’re okay, right?”

Laura stiffens as if he’d just asked her when she plans on ousting her mom. Then she shrugs with the typical Hale bullshit nonchalance, all casual menace overlying the defensiveness.

“I’m good,” she says. “We’ll get the bear for you, I promise. And it’ll be in one piece, and still alive.”

“If it actually _mauls_ you, nobody’s expecting you to forfeit limbs or spend the holidays regrowing your spine, you know,” Stiles says. “We get that. We just—”

“It’ll be fine, Stiles,” Laura says sharply. She presses her lips tightly together, then rolls her shoulders and slides off the rock. Her voice softens a little, in that she sounds less pissed at Stiles and more pissed at herself. “I can do this. I’m not going to fuck it up, okay?”

“Okay. Okay, okay,” Stiles says. He thinks about backing up, then doesn’t, but he does go with a neutral stance as he swivels out of her way. “All right, I’m just gonna…play around with soundwaves with Lydia.”

Laura starts to snap something at him, then catches herself. She pushes her hair roughly from her face, then digs the heel of her hand into her temple. Then she looks at him again, and she’s still irritated at something but she’s calmed enough to be sort of wry about it.

“Yeah.” She takes a step towards the others. “Hey. Thanks.”

Stiles has no idea what for, but he just shrugs. “Sure.”

“Yeah,” Laura says again, under her breath. “All right. That bear.”

* * *

They go with a combination of Scott’s and Jackson’s roars, which pleases Jackson so much that he ignores the part where Francis explains that they just want the bear to feel pressured to come down, and not like it needs to sprint off in a terrified haze, like it would with his or Derek’s roars.

Laura’s roar isn’t even on the table, what with how the younger werewolves might not be able to help how they react to it, but she takes charge of arranging how everybody’s positioned on the shore. Derek glances over once, asking if Stiles is fine with it, and Stiles almost joins in just to keep Derek from getting into it with Laura again. But it honestly makes things a lot easier if Stiles hangs back with Lydia and Allison, and works the camouflage runes from there, so he just gives Derek his best please-tolerate, blowjob-later face and Derek rolls his eyes and grudgingly goes along with his sister’s plan.

So Jackson climbs a tree overlooking the lake, lobs the loudspeaker twig raft so that it parachutes down behind the bear’s tree, and then Lydia fires up the sound recording. 

The bear grunts and snarls, clawing around and around the trunk like it’s on one of those spinning teacup rides, and then abruptly jumps off into the lake. Makes an agitated beeline for shore, and when it gets there, it doesn’t even stop to shake off, just keeps going.

“I think you can turn it off now,” Stiles hisses at Lydia.

She’s frowning at her phone. “I am. I’m trying. I don’t know why—”

Allison yelps, then jumps up, bow out and tracking as the bear takes an unexpected turn and rushes right at the bushes where Scott and Isaac are hiding. Her arm spasms as she _doesn’t_ shoot, and a good thing, because Scott’s just somersaulted right over the bear, directly into her line of fire.

“Showoff,” Stiles mutters. Figures that the one time Scott would get into history, it’d be for the Minoan bull acrobats.

Isaac just jumps for the…nearest tree. Because it’s not like they didn’t just watch the bear crawling all over one for the last hour.

Groaning, Stiles reaches out for the Nemeton. He’s just starting to shake it awake when a dark blur charges the bear from behind, low and fast. It smacks the bear’s rear and then slews around, resolving into Laura at full snarl. And then Scott’s scrambled up to his feet, snarling too as the pair of them divert the bear from Isaac’s tree.

“What are you waiting for?” Jackson yells. “Shoot it!”

Allison sucks in a deep breath, then fires a dart into the bear’s ruff, just as it’s turned its head to look up and find the source of the yell. Almost in the same movement, she grabs up a fresh arrow from Lydia’s hand, reloads, and sends another dart into the bear’s ass.

And a third one within a hair of _Scott’s_ ass, because he is terrible about not crossing lines of fire like that. Allison eeps and slaps her hand to her mouth, then breathes out a huge sigh of relief when Derek casually flips the intercepted bolt into the air, letting it fall dart-end down as he drags Scott out of the way.

Francis slots forward as Derek and Scott back off, joining Laura in circling the bear. The two of them keep just far enough back so that it can’t lunge at them, snarling and kicking dirt at it to keep its attention on them. It’s almost like a dance, watching the three of them work through the woods, and when the bear finally begins to sway and stumble, Stiles notices he’s not the only one who has to give himself a little shake.

Bear down. Scott scoots forward, sniffing, and then makes the all-clear signal. Allison tosses him a vaccination and sampling kit, and he and Francis move in to take care of business.

“Stupid cheap black market parts,” Lydia mutters. She orders Jackson to go get that loudspeaker back, not looking up from her phone. “I bet it was the transmitter.”

“Well, it worked right up till then,” Stiles says. He waits for the little grin on her face, then strolls out to see how everybody else is doing.

Derek’s helping Isaac, who’s lost a sneaker, get down from the tree. Once he’s on the ground, Isaac sinks his claws back into the trunk and balances on his remaining sneaker till Laura knocks his shoe out of another tree. “Sorry about that,” Isaac mutters. “Panicked a little.”

“It’s a bear,” Laura says, shrugging. She hands over his shoe, and then, when he leans down to put it on, stands over him and sniffs deeply.

“I’m okay,” Isaac says, glancing up. “Really, I’m okay. No internal stuff.”

“Just checking.” Laura smiles reassuringly at him, then gives his hair a ruffle. “That whiny captain of yours is never going to shut up if you miss another match due to us.”

Rolling his eyes, Isaac shoves his sneaker on. He hops once, then stomps down on that foot. “ _Co_ -captain,” he says. “Whatever, Scott will deal with him.”

“Or I could deal with Jackson,” Derek says. Grins even as Stiles loops an arm around his waist, sneaking in a pinch to his side. “I’m just saying. Packmates and all.”

“Your psycho’s showing, little bro,” Laura says dryly.

Derek and Laura look at each other for a second, and then they snort in exactly the same way as they turn from each other. Laura keeps fussing over Isaac, helping him pull out a broken claw, and Derek, of course, wants his usual post-badassery scenting. Which Stiles is more than happy to give to him, even if they’ve got to keep it PG. And that means that _Stiles_ has to keep it PG, because Derek is shockingly unconcerned about public displays of affection, for a guy who once explained that his wardrobe’s all cool neutrals because too many people talk to him when he wears bright colors.

“Come on, we’ve still got raccoons to do,” Stiles finally says, shoving Derek off. “I’ll sit with the bear and make sure it’s going to wake up okay.”

“I’ll stay with him, too,” Laura says.

Weirdly enough, Derek doesn’t object. He does give Stiles a totally unnecessary second scenting, followed by a quickie make-out that has Isaac muttering to Scott about tree guardian lung capacity (Scott wisely doesn’t answer, because that would make him a massive hypocrite who’s had Stiles wondering more than once about whether Allison inherited werewolf breathing abilities).

“Text me if you need somebody to come back,” he says, while Laura sighs and Francis demonstrates the art of always managing to have a cellphone prop, even when you’re half-naked.

“He’s okay. He’s just being a good beta,” Laura says once the others are off. “It’s just a little funny to see him like that, he never was much good at tracking back when he was a kid. I was always the one going to get Cora where he’d forgotten her.”

She and Stiles are perched in a tree, one of the few big deciduous trunks aside from the Nemeton, downwind of the bear. Stiles can roughly track the bear’s movements—although with the tree asleep, that means he can only monitor one thing at a time so he can’t keep tabs on the others, but he figures they’ve had their fill of wild exploits for the day—and Laura can use her hearing and sense of smell, so there’s no reason they actually have to watch the bear. And you’ve seen one bear wake up, you’ve seen why even werewolves used to consider a bear kill a rite of passage. Massive, massive teeth.

“I hear you. I was kind of a bad gardener when I was a kid, no lie,” Stiles says. He props his feet up on some crossed lower branches and tries to get his ass to rearrange around a big knot sticking out of the trunk. “Really. My mom used to freak out that she was doing something wrong, because I’d kill all her flowers. But it was just because I couldn’t tell the difference between what they wanted and what they needed, and plants aren’t exactly smart. They _always_ want more water.”

Snickering, Laura idly scrapes her claw sheaths off with a piece of bark. One sticks and she chews on the claw, then uses her impromptu emery board to flick it the rest of the way off. “So, again, I’m sorry for the fuck-ups lately. I think I’ve been trying too hard at this whole alpha thing.”

“I didn’t even notice. I mean, that you were trying. I mean, not that I was doubting that you were, you just—ugh, um, strike all of that shit, and I’m just saying, you seem pretty chill,” Stiles babbles. “Me, now, I might be gracing the endangered species list but sometimes, okay, honestly, a lot of the time, I feel like that might be from sheer stupidity. You know, like the dodo.”

Laura looks up from her manicuring, frowning. Her brows twitch in the usual way of people who haven’t yet developed a full Stiles-ramble filter, and who need to translate the hard way, i.e., resorting all the words into proper English order.

And then she snorts and shakes her head. “Nah, you’re fine, Stiles,” she says. “Seriously.”

“I’m _eighteen_ ,” Stiles says, half-exasperated. Because sure, it’s flattering and all, but just once he’d like somebody to…well, not spaz out with him about how ill-equipped he is, but at least acknowledge the reality? “I spent my whole life working on being an awesome fucking tree guardian, not an alpha werewolf. I mean, I’m not even an expert in werewolf body language.”

“If you’re comparing yourself to Melissa McCall, or to your dad, well, Melissa is basically your ideal packborn, except for the whole being in a pack thing, and your dad’s…your dad.” Laura looks faintly impressed and confused at the same time, and very much like her mother. Then she shrugs that off and looks at Stiles again. “Besides, you don’t have to be an expert in that. Peter and Derek can handle outsiders till you get up to speed, so really, you just have to be an expert in _them_. And you’re…you’re really good with Derek.”

“The little pause isn’t because you’re going to try and say I’m better than you, is it?” Stiles says skeptically.

Laura shrugs again. Her coat collar rolls up so she looks like she’s sinking into it, pulling in like a turtle. And her expression looks a little that way too. “Well, he follows your lead a lot better,” she mutters. “Look, Stiles. I’m not jealous or anything, okay? Just—so back in the day, we figured that Derek would stay with the main pack. Peter was always going to end up in a satellite, as soon as we were old enough so that he didn’t have to help Mom so much. But Derek was this—he didn’t even like going on away trips with the basketball team. Total homebody.”

Derek’s not exactly a big traveler now, Stiles almost points out. But Laura seems like she’s on a roll of something, so he just sits tight and lets her.

“And then Kate Argent happened, and it was a goddamn circus around here, and he ended up going away for college just to try and get some air,” Laura says. She rakes her hand back through her hair so hard her fingers get tangled, and she has to pull them out and then put them back in to get through the knot. “He started hanging out a lot more with Peter at that point, talking about splitting off.”

“Which you were okay with?” Stiles prompts.

“Well, yeah,” Laura says, like it’s the stupidest question ever. She pushes at her hair again, staring out into the woods. “I fucked that up, why wouldn’t he try somebody else?”

It takes a couple seconds for Stiles to even guess at what Laura means. The Hales all have their buried traumas, but Laura’s always been the most naturally breezy of them and he had actually bought that as the truth. “Wait, what, you mean Kate trying to get at Derek?”

“I’m his big sister on top of his alpha,” Laura says. Her tone’s sharp, but not at Stiles. “And we had to have a teacher tell us what was going on? I was—I was _at school_ with him, I saw that blonde bitch hanging around. I mean—we’re werewolves. I should’ve smelled something, at least.”

“Well, I mean, she was a sociopath with a rap sheet like the collective war crimes of certain Third World countries,” Stiles says.

Laura rolls her eyes. “Yeah, so, should’ve been even easier to notice, right?”

“I’m not up on the details—” because Stiles read the paper records and then started to watch some of Kate’s deposition tapes, and got so disgusted he had to go clean his brain with a marathon of seventies’ sci-fi TV “—but if killer sociopaths were that easy to deal with, my dad’s life would have a lot less paperwork in it. And—and Derek’s pretty good now, you know.”

For a second Laura looks like she’s going to argue with him, and very viciously. And then she just rearranges herself on the branches. She takes a deep breath and then lets it out in a heavy sigh, and then gives Stiles a small, wry smile.

“You’re gonna be fine,” she says. She sheathes and unsheathes her claws a few times, then reaches around behind her to rub her pinky claw against the trunk. “And don’t worry about me. It’s going to be a while before Mom wants to retire, anyway. Plenty of time to see who else wants to stay.”

“You could always go omega. So no, I’m not forgetting about all the social baggage that comes with it. But I’m just saying, you know. If pack leader’s not for you,” Stiles says hesitantly.

Laura smiles at him again and it’s a little closer to her usual sarcastic amusement. “Thanks, but no. I do want the pack life, and I do—I would like to be a good alpha. It’s more like, I’ve got a couple pretty big dings on my record already. I guess.”

“I think Isaac would disagree. Not that I talk to him much, but judging from lacrosse practice, he is _thrilled_ to be a werewolf,” Stiles says.

“Yeah, about that, they teach you guys the flip thing? Or is that a Service thing?” Laura says, making a little tumbling gesture with her hands. She smirks at Stiles’ sputtering, then leans back against the tree. “Kidding. And Isaac, pretty much anybody would look better after his father. But I think he’s a lot less me at this point, and more everybody else. I wish I could do more, but I just don’t even know where to start. Mom set up the foster family gig, Peter got him his therapist, and I just…show up every couple weekends and try to ask him about school. I can’t even get Cora to play nice with him.”

“Does he want her to?” Stiles asks. “No offense to anybody, but at least as far as Cora goes, I think the overlap in their interests is somewhere around zero. As in, they’re both werewolves and that’s pretty much it.”

Laura’s brows tick up and she looks thoughtful. She starts to respond and then stops herself. Then she tilts her head, listening.

“I think the bear’s up,” she says.

Stiles checks and the bear’s definitely stumbling over some tree roots. He and Laura wait a few more minutes, till they’re sure it’s up and wandering away from them, and then they climb down from the tree.

“I’m okay. Really.” Laura kicks a branch out of the way, then just pulls off her coat and bundles it up around the shredded sleeve. “It’s just this stupid thesis. It’s like everybody thinks once I finish it, I’m going to come home and start pack-building with Cora and Isaac, and I might have done right by Isaac once, but with his life, I think he deserves to not have anybody screw with him more.”

“And Cora’s just whatever?” Stiles says, half-joking.

“Cora has to get a little screwing with to grow up right, it’s in the sister handbook,” Laura says dryly. Then she sighs. “Honestly, I don’t know about her. She doesn’t do it when Mom’s around but I know she’s asked Derek a couple times how it’s like with an alpha who’s not family. She wasn’t that old when shit went down, but…she was old enough to see some stuff.”

Stiles makes a face, even though he’s trying to be sympathetic. “She’d better not be thinking about waltzing into my pack. I don’t just take any Hales, and I’m sorry, but she is straight up nasty sometimes.”

Laura grins. “I know. It’s so cute, isn’t it? She really seems to think that that’ll get her anywhere outside of high school.”

“Maybe you should screw with her a little more. Derek won’t, he just tries to get me to spend more time with him,” Stiles mutters.

Laughing, Laura leaps a fallen trunk that Stiles has to painstakingly, with some scrabbling and near-falling, climb over. She doesn’t help him but she does wait till he’s pulled out all the splinters from his fingers.

“Well, hey, if you ever want to bitch about my baby bro and sis, I can do that, easy,” Laura says, and then a flicker of uncertainty goes across her face. “And if you don’t mind me bitching a little. I gotta say…it’s nice to be able to compare notes with another alpha. Till you showed up, I pretty much had to talk to Peter. Not that he’s not a good resource, but he tends to…”

“…think everything can be solved with blackmail? Yeah, I’ve noticed,” Stiles says. Which personally, Stiles finds attractive and strangely adorable, and is not ashamed. But he’ll totally admit that it causes a lot of unnecessary drama, too. Even if it’s funny. “Sure, I don’t mind. Never gonna turn down an opportunity to get dirt on the younger Hales.”

“Oh, Stiles,” Laura says, shaking her head and grinning. “I have so much more than Peter. So much.”

* * *

“Because he was out running around with Mom, helping her with business, and Laura was deep-sixing all the other babysitters left and right so we had to spend time with her,” Derek grumbles that night, when all raccoons are tagged and he and Stiles are back at the tree, cuddling in the tent and waiting for Peter to get off work.

Well. Stiles is cuddling. Derek is seething over past sibling offenses, and doesn’t seem to notice the hands Stiles has in his jeans. Stiles sighs and takes them out, and then rolls his eyes when Derek makes a protesting noise. “You’re not gonna do anything with them, you don’t deser—”

Growling, Derek rolls them over. Gets the sleeping bag all tangled up around their feet, head buried in Stiles’ neck, like Stiles is one of those tootsie-roll pops and Derek’s really, really set on figuring out just how many licks to the center. Which, okay, Stiles isn’t really objecting, but the sleeping bag’s in the way of them getting their pants off too.

He pushes and shoves, and Derek lets them go so he’s under Stiles, but he doesn’t stop sucking and kissing, so Stiles has no way of getting his hands down past their waist. So Stiles sighs—fine, groans in a very frustrated way—and bites Derek on the side of the neck, and while his boyfriend’s shuddering from it, kicks the bag off and sticks his hands back into Derek’s jeans.

This time Derek’s properly appreciative, sprawling out and testing the canvas tent bottom with his claws as Stiles works his cock out. His eyes half-close and he makes upward jerking motions with his chin, tiny encouraging noises spilling out of him. They get a little irritable and grunty as Stiles scrabbles around for the lube, but once Stiles has slicked fingers pulling at Derek’s cock, the noises go very quickly to contented purrs.

And then Derek snarls, lifting his head and his hands in a what-the-fuck glowy-eyes face when Stiles stops moving his hand. Stiles laughs and pecks Derek on his wolfed out forehead. Then kisses him a little longer, on his twitching upper lip, right above those fangs. And then, as Derek slumps down, human again, hips tilting up into Stiles’ once-again moving hand, square on his mouth. They make out, and then Derek lolls back and lets Stiles eat out his mouth, groaning and hitching frantically up.

“Shit, _what_?” Derek snaps, the second time Stiles stops.

“Nothing.” Stiles nuzzles down along Derek’s jaw, using his free hand to curl behind Derek’s neck and support it, and slips his hand down to fondle Derek’s balls. Kind of awkward, what with them still being in Derek’s jeans, but from the way Derek starts panting, it feels just fine. “Just, amazing, you know? We actually managed to not kill the bear!”

“Oh. Oh, yeah.” Derek subsides into a heavy-lidded, hazy-eyed puddle, rocking his nape back into Stiles’ hand as his cock runs through Stiles’ fingers. “Yeah, good, right? So—shit, shit, Stiles, come on—god _damn_ it, alpha, what?”

Stiles doesn’t quite roll his eyes as he kisses Derek hard, and does not loosen his hold on the base of Derek’s cock the slightest bit. He’s pushed Derek way longer than this, pushed him longer and harder, and Derek loved it, loves it, loves anything that lets him show off how much he can stand for Stiles’ sake. But it would figure that the one place Derek also can’t stop complaining is in bed.

“Just that you were a very, very good beta today,” Stiles tells him. Nipping and licking along his jaw, feeling out stubble rasp with teeth, till Derek’s whimpering and straining his head backwards, trying to get Stiles to drop to his throat. “Didn’t cause any fights, didn’t piss off your sister, didn’t even ruin your clothes. So _good_ , Derek. So you wanna fuck me?”

“Yeah,” Derek breathes, and then his eyes snap open. “Wait, wha—”

Honestly, Stiles is more of an equal-opportunity sort, but Derek and Peter seem to like taking it so much he feels a little bad not going along. But variety’s the spice of life and all, and fuck that stereotypical bullshit about catchers can’t be toppers.

Stiles shucks his jeans off the rest of the way, swings his leg over Derek, and then sinks down onto Derek’s cock just as his boyfriend gets it together enough to push up on his elbows. So Derek’s arms go out from under him and his eyes close as he arches back, teeth clenched together, little achy snarls leaking out from between them. Definitely not objecting to the change of pace. Laughing, Stiles grabs at Derek’s shoulders and concentrates on relaxing; he’d stretched himself out before Derek got in the tent, but Derek had to delay shit by being all grumpy and he’s just a little uncomfortable.

“Oh, fuck, _fuck_ ,” Derek’s gritting out, clawing at the tent bottom. His shirt flaps up higher and higher with each aborted hip-buck he makes, till it’s gone up over his nipples. He keeps arching, pushing those pretty nipples right into Stiles’ face, and when Stiles takes up the invite and scratches over one, Derek breaks and seizes Stiles’ hips.

Doesn’t pull down, he’s too well-trained for that when Stiles is squeezing the back of his neck. But he doesn’t take his hands away, so they flex and spasm against Stiles’ skin as he bends over, easing a little further onto Derek’s cock, and sucks lightly at one nipple. Then pets his hand up Derek’s belly, leaving lube trails all over those amazing abs.

“Such a fucking nice _cock_ ,” Stiles mutters, finally wiggling the rest of it into him. He pauses to let a streak of white-hot pleasure crash through him, then spread out into a pleasantly tingling heat. And then he shifts down and licks at Derek’s mouth. “Okay, c’mon, Derek, c’mon, show your alpha you know what to do with it.”

Growling, Derek rolls them again. Or tries to roll them, except halfway over they get distracted in each other’s mouths. But whatever, werewolf flexibility and claws means Derek braces himself anyway, doesn’t need to flip Stiles onto his back to give him a good, fast, hard fucking.

Derek doesn’t come till Stiles has, and has recovered enough to stop clutching at his neck. And then he tucks his head down into Stiles’ chest, whining, and shivers when Stiles gives him the permission-bite on his throat.

They’ve totally kicked the sleeping bag to the other side of the tent, and are basically on the ground with a nothing layer of canvas keeping Stiles from having to pop antifungal pills again. So, once Stiles has stopped seeing dancing dots, he nudges and heaves till he’s back on top of Derek, and then he flops comfortably down on his living pillow. Sits up as his ass twinges, pulls himself off, and then flops again.

“Okay,” Stiles says. “Okay. Tent sex, check.”

“We could’ve done it the first night if you hadn’t spent the whole time trying to figure out how we were going to use everybody,” Derek mutters. He stretches his arms out over his head, showing off by cracking his back with all of Stiles’ weight on him, and then crosses his arms under his head. “I told you Laura wouldn’t be a big deal. She’s annoying, but she usually figures it out in the end.”

Stiles pushes himself up, then decides nah, his ass wants down. And he’s more of an alpha if he just keeps on doing what he’s doing and snuggles Derek, instead of taking the low road and responding to every bitchy little comment Derek makes.

“So you guys talked, right?” Derek says after a second. “She’s good?”

“Well, like you said, she figures out stuff in the end,” Stiles says. He does move around so that he’s curling his hand over Derek’s shoulder, right up against Derek’s neck. “So what am I now, the Hale therapy botanist? ‘cause I’m all right with helping out, but I just would like to know.”

“No, I didn’t mean—” Derek takes his arms out from under his head, like he’s going to get up, and then just presses his fists back against the ground. He sighs. “I just meant, I kind of figured she wanted to talk to you, and she seems better now. Laura can get sort of touchy, and she hates admitting it. To family, anyway. She had a steady boyfriend for a while and he was good for that, but then he wanted to start having kids and they broke up.”

Stiles raises his head, surprised, and then is annoyed at himself for that. Because Derek’s emotionally inept sometimes, not stupid, and he certainly is familiar with the whole acting-out thing.

“We did talk,” Stiles finally says. “She offered me her vast collection of embarrassing childhood stories in return for me listening to her talk about how she’s continuing the Hale tradition of pretending she’s okay when she’s got half her organs hanging out of her.”

Derek makes a face, and then makes a slightly less irritated, slightly more worried one. “She’s not that bad,” he says, and relaxes when Stiles pats his neck. “She just feels like she should’ve gotten it worse during the mess with our dad’s death, for some reason.”

Stiles lifts his head again. “Seriously?”

“Yeah, I don’t know,” Derek mutters. He pulls his arms around to drape over Stiles, then noses under Stiles’ jaw for a few seconds. “Not that I—that we talk about it. Just, I think that’s what she thinks sometimes. And I told you, you know—it wasn’t her fault.”

“It wasn’t yours either,” Stiles says. “You didn’t know she was a nutcase.”

Derek shrugs it off a little, but his eyes flick over and he looks a tiny bit grateful. He nuzzles Stiles again, then pushes Stiles half-off, twisting so that he can get up by the tent door. He sniffs, then relaxes; must be Peter coming up. “Anyway. You think she’ll go back to her thesis now?”

“Well, if she doesn’t, I can slot her to go with the baby rangers tomorrow,” Stiles says. “They’re going after that wild boar wallow.”

“She does hate mud,” Derek says thoughtfully. “And she’s already down a coat. Maybe one of the boars will eat her boots.”

“And I see our moment of sibling care and loyalty is over.” Stiles gives Derek’s hair a ruffle as he twists around, trying to find where that bottle of sanitary wipes is before they get unpleasantly sticky. “You get that we’re not supposed to use this as opportunity to revenge ourselves for the time Laura stole the last piece of cake or whatever, right?”

“It was usually the last piece of deer heart, but I think the sentiment’s the same,” Peter says, popping his head into the tent. He sniffs, then looks them over. Then starts unbuttoning his shirt as he crawls into the tent. “Are we discussing family disputes without me? Shame, Stiles. You know that that’s my best area.”

Derek throws a wipe at Peter’s head, and then nicely hands the rest of them to Stiles. And kind of just lounges there, naked from the waist down, eyeing the bits of Peter’s clothes that are rapidly accumulating on the tent floor. And eyeing the bits of Peter that those clothes were covering up.

“Not our fault you missed all the fun today,” Derek says.

“Well, some of us have to work indoors. Besides, I did get a rundown from Francis,” Peter sniffs. He slithers across the tent and starts helping Stiles clean himself off. In that he dabs that wipe Derek threw at him at some nonexistent dirt on Stiles’ jaw, and then helps himself to a long, teasing scenting that goes way, way below neck height. “There was a bear, apparently? And somehow, nobody ended up with their arm stuck in a tree?”

“That was when I was _six_ —” Derek snarls. And then he tackles Peter, both to shut him up and because, apparently, Peter’s remaining clothes have mortally offended Derek and need to be immediately eliminated.

So Peter gets naked, and the sleeping bag’s still shoved over in the corner, and then the two of them flop over Stiles’ lap, still bickering. Peter finally shuts Derek up by stuffing his face into Stiles’ knee, and then looks up.

“Did you still want to talk about Laura?” Peter asks. He’s panting slightly, but he looks fully ready to ditch his squirming, cursing nephew for serious business, if necessary.

“No. No, I think she and I…I think we worked it out for now,” Stiles says. He reaches over and pulls over the sleeping bag, stuffing it up behind his back so he at least gets some cushioning on his spine. Tree guardianship really should come with outdoor sex padding. “Though this does _not_ mean I’m in charge of another Hale, okay? I’ve got my hands full already.”

“Perish the thought,” Peter says. He leans into the hand Stiles is using to comb through his hair, then starts kissing and licking his way up Stiles’ thigh. Doesn’t stop when Derek gets out of his grip, slaps his shoulder, and then starts nibbling at said body part. “And very well, I can certainly think of better things to do than swap family gossip.”

Derek snorts something about Peter and family reunions, to which Peter both manages to kiss him into a moan, and also slip in a comment about Derek’s babysitting misadventures. And—as insanely curious as Stiles is about that, he puts a pin in it. He can ask later, and as for now, he’s just…going to slide on into the other two. Because the view from outside is great, but nothing beats getting right in the middle of it.

**Author's Note:**

> My mental image for Francis is Clive Standen from _Vikings_. Talia likes her arm candy and is not ashamed about it at all.
> 
> Black bears are actually very good climbers, and are limited in how high they can go more by sheer weight than by ability.
> 
> I realize that the show posits Scott as the epitome of light and good and fluffiness, and that the show isn't even consistent about its mythology within a single episode, but still, a trained German Shepherd police dog will freak out even before Derek growls subvocally at it, but this is never a serious problem at Deaton's clinic? Does Scott just not handle any animals but the dogs? Because I don't see how a vet can run much of a clinic if the poor cats get stressed out every time his assistant steps into the room. So my implied solution: Scott is secretly a Disney Princess, with magical cute-animal attracting powers.


End file.
